The Martian Chronicles Mass Market Author: Visit Amazon's Ray Bradbury Page | Language: English | ISBN:
1451678193 | Format: PDF
The Martian Chronicles Mass Market Description
Review
“A modern classic” —
The Washington Post“A giant…One of the country’s most popular and prolific authors.” —
Los Angeles Times“One of the greats of twentieth century American fantasy.” —
Newsday“There is no simpler, yet deeper, stylist than Bradbury. Out of the plainest of words he creates images and moods that readers seem to carry with them forever.” —
San Francisco Chronicle“A wonderful storyteller….Nearly everything he has written is sheer poetry.” —
St. Louis Post-DispatchFrom the Back Cover
Mars was a distant shore, and the men spread upon it in waves. Each wave different, and each wave stronger.
Ray Bradbury is a storyteller without peer, a poet of the possible, and, indisputably, one of America’s most beloved authors. The Mars he imagines in these masterful chronicles is a place of hope, dreams, and metaphor—of crystal pillars and fossil seas—where a fine dust settles on the great, empty cities of a silently destroyed civilization. Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles is a classic work of twentieth-century literature whose extraordinary power and imagination remain undimmed by time’s passage. In connected, chronological stories, a true grand master once again enthralls, delights, and challenges us with his vision and heart—starkly exposing in brilliant spacelight our strength, weakness, folly, and poignant humanity in a strange and breathtaking world where humanity does not belong.
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
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- Mass Market Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster; Reprint edition (April 17, 2012)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 9781451678192
- ISBN-13: 978-1451678192
- ASIN: 1451678193
- Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.1 x 0.9 inches
- Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
This book clearly deserves more than five stars. It is one of the most moving and important set of observations about our human issues ever written in either science fiction or science fantasy form.
Ray Bradbury wrote these short stories in the late 1940s at a time when we knew almost nothing about Mars. Some scientists even thought there were probably canals and the remnants of a dead or dying Martian civilization on Mars. Written as science fiction originally by Mr. Bradbury, our growing knowledge of Mars makes these assumptions science fantasy today. But don't let that shift rob these stories of their power over you.
But Mars was just the setting for a more serious set of questions. Mr. Bradbury was concerned that the world was too full of hate, war, short-sightedness, and greed to amount to much. He despaired as to whether humans would survive the discovery of the atomic bomb. From this raw material of human excess, he stitched together a powerful vision of our choices -- to operate at our best . . . or our worst. He appeals to our better selves in a vivid way that will be unforgettable to you, if you are like me.
The development of the book has an interesting history. Mr. Bradbury was in his late twenties, and had written quite a few short stories. While visiting New York, he showed his short stories to publishers who liked them. The publishers advised him that there was a market for novels, but not much of one for books of short stories. Then one night it hit him, he had the raw material for a novel about Mars if he simply wrote a few transition stories to fit with ones he had already written. He sat up late that night writing the book proposal, and sold it the next day. That concept became The Martian Chronicles.
Mr.
The Martian Chronicles is, in many ways, one of science fiction's most important novels. It's deemed an essential read on almost all notable lists, is the book that broke Bradbury into the mainstream, and was the single most widely read SF book during the 1950's. This book is not a novel per se, but rather a collection of separately linked stories that chronicle, in about as many ways as you can imagine, Man's experiences with Mars, hence the title. Though it covers a span of time from 1999-2026, it is, like all great SF, a commentary on the times in which it was written, rather than the times it is set in. This book is a startling example of human folly. In contrast to much science fiction (from The War of the Worlds onward) the Martians in Bradbury's universe are calm, peaceful, and dreamlike (for the most part, anyway) rather than vicious and malicious. This book shows how humans-arrogant, self-righteous, and irrespectful-can and probably will ruin a beautiful, peaceful planet through ignorance and lack of respect. Also in the book are situations depicting ways in which other races we meet in space may react to us. I found these situations to be highly original and imaginative, sometimes we fail to realize that there are other ways for them to react besides peaceful, cooperative tranquility and war. Sprinkled throughout the seriousness of the stories mentioned above, are lighter, somewhat comical tales that liven up the pace a bit. Through fictional situations, this book also manages to comment on such issues as racism, slavery, social life, marriage, etc. A highly interesting read. Though it is a short read (less than 200 pages) it feels like an epic.
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